Weird electrical problems with hard drives and power supply

I'm going to put the background in the bottom paragraph, but since
it's lengthy, you might skip it and I'll cut right to the chase up
front.

My computer refuses to startup on its own power supply. If everything
is detached but the motherboard (Asus A7N8X), then the fans turn on
but the motherboard doesn't even post. If either of the two hard
drives (80GB Seagate Barracudas, SATA) are connected to the power
supply, then the supply makes a weird buzz when you try to start the
computer and nothing happens, not even the fans.

Currently, I've harvested a power supply and a hard drive with an old
windows 98 installation from another computer. Now everything starts
up fine. If I try to hook up one of the original hard drives to this
new power supply, nothing turns on, not even the fans (although
there's no buzz sound). So I'm kinda stuck, and I don't know what
needs fixing: the original power supply, the hard drives, or both.

Whats weird is that the problem is not just the original supply -
since it can't even boot up the lone motherboard but the replacement
supply can - and its not just the hard drives - since they keep the
computer from starting under either supply. Very bizarre.

So, in case you think it might help, here is how it got like this.
The computer, which I built, had been having problems with seizing.
Every couple times a week to would freeze completely and kinda beep.
Then, after about 30 seconds, it would return perfectly fine. When I
finally opened up the case, I found that one of the fans had been
jammed. I figured the processor was just over heating. When I
detached the power to the fan to remove it, I also disconnected the
power to a hard drive. Then I turned on the computer with the case
open and suddenly figured out the hard drive was powerless. So, I
figured I'd plug it in real quick. Big Mistake. There was a really
weird loud noise and the heavy smell of ozone (which I think gets made
during short circuits sometimes). The computer shut off.

I tried to start it again when I was sure that the power cables were
correct, without success. I finally detached everything but the
motherboard and found, as mentioned above, that the fans came on but
the motherboard wouldnt boot (it would makes audible sounds if it is
booting or having problems, and it was silent). Furthermore, if I
plugged in a hard drive, nothing worked. After much tinkering, I
tried the new power supply, and found that it booted the motherboard
fine. Then I added components and found everything to work unless one
of the original hard drives was connect. In this cast, nothing
worked.

So now I am running a clunky 5 year old copy of windows 98 with a 2.5
GHZ processor, 512 megs of ram, and beautiful dual monitors. Not
where I want to be. I really need my hard drives back, and I need to
find out if the first supply is salvagable.

Thanks for absolutely anything you can think of.

(Charles Riedel) wrote in message news:< om>...
> So, in case you think it might help, here is how it got like this.
> The computer, which I built, had been having problems with seizing.
> Every couple times a week to would freeze completely and kinda beep.
> Then, after about 30 seconds, it would return perfectly fine. When I
> finally opened up the case, I found that one of the fans had been
> jammed. I figured the processor was just over heating. When I
> detached the power to the fan to remove it, I also disconnected the
> power to a hard drive. Then I turned on the computer with the case
> open and suddenly figured out the hard drive was powerless. So, I
> figured I'd plug it in real quick. Big Mistake. There was a really
> weird loud noise and the heavy smell of ozone (which I think gets made
> during short circuits sometimes). The computer shut off.

Very bad move. I have found that it is also bad to try reseating PCI
cards witht the power on. It blew the audio out on my parent's
computer, but that was it, so I'm very lucky. The card (modem) still
even worked. However, I doubt your harddrive will ever work again,
unless you successfully pull the following off:

The circuit board on your HD has something fried, but the platters and
head should be OK. Find an identical (very identical, you know, model
numbers and such) HD (preferably working), and then swap the good
circuit board over to the old drive. You will have to be very
careful, I have my doubts if it can be done by the average person, but
hey, you might be lucky. Just make sure you don't have power
connected to the drive while you change the boards. Just kidding.

If you end up botching that job, or you don't want to try it, I
suppose you could send it in to one of the drive recovery places (find
one with your favorite search engine). I imagine it would be a fairly
routine job for them to do. But I highly recommend trying to switch
circuit boards yourself.

May you have steady hands,

Aaron

(Charles Riedel) wrote in message news:< om>...
> I'm going to put the background in the bottom paragraph, but since
> it's lengthy, you might skip it and I'll cut right to the chase up
> front.
>
> My computer refuses to startup on its own power supply. If everything
> is detached but the motherboard (Asus A7N8X), then the fans turn on
> but the motherboard doesn't even post. If either of the two hard
> drives (80GB Seagate Barracudas, SATA) are connected to the power
> supply, then the supply makes a weird buzz when you try to start the
> computer and nothing happens, not even the fans.
>
> Currently, I've harvested a power supply and a hard drive with an old
> windows 98 installation from another computer. Now everything starts
> up fine. If I try to hook up one of the original hard drives to this
> new power supply, nothing turns on, not even the fans (although
> there's no buzz sound). So I'm kinda stuck, and I don't know what
> needs fixing: the original power supply, the hard drives, or both.
>
> Whats weird is that the problem is not just the original supply -
> since it can't even boot up the lone motherboard but the replacement
> supply can - and its not just the hard drives - since they keep the
> computer from starting under either supply. Very bizarre.
>
> So, in case you think it might help, here is how it got like this.
> The computer, which I built, had been having problems with seizing.
> Every couple times a week to would freeze completely and kinda beep.
> Then, after about 30 seconds, it would return perfectly fine. When I
> finally opened up the case, I found that one of the fans had been
> jammed. I figured the processor was just over heating. When I
> detached the power to the fan to remove it, I also disconnected the
> power to a hard drive. Then I turned on the computer with the case
> open and suddenly figured out the hard drive was powerless. So, I
> figured I'd plug it in real quick. Big Mistake. There was a really
> weird loud noise and the heavy smell of ozone (which I think gets made
> during short circuits sometimes). The computer shut off.
>
> I tried to start it again when I was sure that the power cables were
> correct, without success. I finally detached everything but the
> motherboard and found, as mentioned above, that the fans came on but
> the motherboard wouldnt boot (it would makes audible sounds if it is
> booting or having problems, and it was silent). Furthermore, if I
> plugged in a hard drive, nothing worked. After much tinkering, I
> tried the new power supply, and found that it booted the motherboard
> fine. Then I added components and found everything to work unless one
> of the original hard drives was connect. In this cast, nothing
> worked.
>
> So now I am running a clunky 5 year old copy of windows 98 with a 2.5
> GHZ processor, 512 megs of ram, and beautiful dual monitors. Not
> where I want to be. I really need my hard drives back, and I need to
> find out if the first supply is salvagable.
>
> Thanks for absolutely anything you can think of.

Then I turned on the computer with the case
open and suddenly figured out the hard drive was powerless. So, I
figured I'd plug it in real quick. Big Mistake. There was a really
weird loud noise and the heavy smell of ozone (which I think gets made
during short circuits sometimes). The computer shut off.

sounds like you shorted out the hard drives. Have you tried putting
the drives in another computer to see if they work? Thats the only way
i can think of to see if their any good. I'd give that a try. If that
doesn't work then you shorted them out when you tried to plug them in
when computer was running.

carl

>
> The circuit board on your HD has something fried, but the platters and
> head should be OK. Find an identical (very identical, you know, model
> numbers and such) HD (preferably working), and then swap the good
> circuit board over to the old drive. You will have to be very
> careful, I have my doubts if it can be done by the average person, but
> hey, you might be lucky. Just make sure you don't have power
> connected to the drive while you change the boards. Just kidding.
>

I tried this with a dirve about 3 years ago and it worked just fine,
mind you the data had better be pretty valuable to risk screwing two
drives. I think all the HDDs now have a little cage over the
electronics and since I haven't taken one apart recently, I don't know
if you can even get at the board.

(Aaron) wrote in message news:<. com>...
> (Charles Riedel) wrote in message news:< om>...
> > So, in case you think it might help, here is how it got like this.
> > The computer, which I built, had been having problems with seizing.
> > Every couple times a week to would freeze completely and kinda beep.
> > Then, after about 30 seconds, it would return perfectly fine. When I
> > finally opened up the case, I found that one of the fans had been
> > jammed. I figured the processor was just over heating. When I
> > detached the power to the fan to remove it, I also disconnected the
> > power to a hard drive. Then I turned on the computer with the case
> > open and suddenly figured out the hard drive was powerless. So, I
> > figured I'd plug it in real quick. Big Mistake. There was a really
> > weird loud noise and the heavy smell of ozone (which I think gets made
> > during short circuits sometimes). The computer shut off.
>
> Very bad move. I have found that it is also bad to try reseating PCI
> cards witht the power on. It blew the audio out on my parent's
> computer, but that was it, so I'm very lucky. The card (modem) still
> even worked. However, I doubt your harddrive will ever work again,
> unless you successfully pull the following off:
>
> The circuit board on your HD has something fried, but the platters and
> head should be OK. Find an identical (very identical, you know, model
> numbers and such) HD (preferably working), and then swap the good
> circuit board over to the old drive. You will have to be very
> careful, I have my doubts if it can be done by the average person, but
> hey, you might be lucky. Just make sure you don't have power
> connected to the drive while you change the boards. Just kidding.
>
> If you end up botching that job, or you don't want to try it, I
> suppose you could send it in to one of the drive recovery places (find
> one with your favorite search engine). I imagine it would be a fairly
> routine job for them to do. But I highly recommend trying to switch
> circuit boards yourself.
>
> May you have steady hands,
>
> Aaron

First off, thanks to everyone for the help. I've decided to try to
replace the circuit board on the hard drives. Is it possible to buy a
lone circuit board for a particular model, or do you have to buy a
full hard drive? I'll have to call seagate, because I couldn't find
any online after a quick search.

Once again, thanks for the input.

Jess